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Solana-based lifestyle Web3 app STEPN, which encourages users to move to earn has recently released a new anti-cheat mechanism to combat fraud on its platform. The app said solving cheating for P2E games is of utmost importance in order to secure a lasting economy and tools like artificial intelligence (AI) can help a lot.
STEPN to Use AI to Solve Cheating
STEPN is a popular Web3 lifestyle app based on the Solana blockchain. It enables users to earn tokens such as GST by walking, jogging, or running while using the application. Since its launch earlier this year, the fitness app has burst into popularity.
Last week, STEPN introduced its anti-cheating system that aims to eliminate fake users from the platform. Dubbed “Stepn’s Model for Anti-Cheating,” or SMAC, the upgrade also aims to prevent fraudulent motion data on the app that tries to game the system and reap unfair profit from the platform.
The app explained that they will cross-reference a user’s running data “to check global, contextual and collective outliers at the end of each of their sessions.” If the SMAC System detects an anomaly using data like GPS tracking, motion sensor, and health data, the user will be flagged as a cheater and all its rewards for the session will be erased.
In an upcoming update, the app will introduce yet another measure to make cheating more arduous. Called the Turing Score (TS), each user will start with a score of 100/100 but at the end of each session, the system will automatically add or deduct a user’s score based on the amount of anomaly detected.
Users won’t be able to interact with the in-app marketplace or transfer between spending and wallet accounts when their TS falls below 100. In order to increase their TS again, users will need to pass sessions without cheating, which will help them slowly regain points to their TS.
STEPN noted that tackling cheating is a major concern for every Play2Earn game. That is because such games need to retain a sustainable economy as their user base grows in order to make sure everyone is getting their fair portion of rewards.
“For Play2Earn games where money is involved, solving cheating and closing the door on bad actors is of utmost importance. Given how cheating potentially undermines carefully crafted game ecosystems, developers work hard to take anti-cheating software to the next level. A significant amount of resources are dedicated to combating cheating.”
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STEPN Faced Multiple DDoS Attacks
Following the recent anti-cheating update, STEPN was hit by a massive wave of distributed denial of service or DDoS attacks. The app revealed on Twitter that it has suffered a number of DDoS attacks causing recovery maintenance and associated improper performance. The platform said:
“We were experiencing network issues due to a 25 million DDOS attack sent to the server within a short period of time. Due to network congestion, AI cannot receive user information and identify them as bots.”
The application has since resolved that issue and restored services. STEPN said that they have reopened “data transfers” and also “improved the rules and formulated processing and identification rules.”
3/5. We have restored the network and strengthened our servers, and data transfers have reopened and remain stable. We have also improved the rules and formulated processing and identification rules. You needn’t be worried to be tagged as bot again. Feel free to use the App.
— STEPN | Public Beta Phase IV (@Stepnofficial) June 4, 2022
Meanwhile, at the time of writing, STEPN’s native token GMT is trading around $1, up by more than 8% over the past 24 hours. Notably, the coin is down by over 7% over the past week and by around 75% compared to its all-time high of $4.11 recorded in late April 2022.
Do you think STEPN could solve inevitable cheating in popular P2E games? Let us know in the comments below.